The federal government should keep giving money to housing co-ops whose mortgages have been paid off, mayoral candidate Olivia Chow said at a news conference Wednesday.

The federal subsidies allow low-income co-op residents to pay discounted rent. Residents and advocates say the elimination of the funding will force poor people out of their longtime homes.

The subsidies expire when each co-op building’s mortgage expires. The federal Conservatives have rejected pleas to extend the subsidy arrangement, saying that co-ops have long known that the money would disappear with the mortgages — and won’t actually suffer without it.

Chow said she would pressure the federal government on the matter if elected.

“In this climate, where the existing affordable housing are falling apart and there are a huge number of people waiting for affordable housing, the last thing that should happen — people that are living in affordable housing should not have to lose their units,” she said in the garden outside the Hugh Garner Co-op on Ontario St. “And this is what’s going to happen in the city when the federal government walks away.”

The money at issue will grow over time, but it is relatively modest in the short term: as of 2017, the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada says, $3 million per year will be needed to preserve the subsidies for 29 buildings in Toronto whose mortgages end between now and then.

Chow, though, did not suggest the city should pick up the tab, and she did not present any other proposals for concrete municipal action.

In a rare moment of harmony, candidate John Tory agreed with Chow that the subsidies should be preserved. Spokeswoman Amanda Galbraith said Tory would do better than Chow at building a “positive working relationship with the Harper government and the Wynne government.”

Conservative MP Brad Butt (Mississauga-Streetsville) said co-ops will not be harmed by the end of the subsidy: while they will no longer have that revenue, they will also no longer have a mortgage expense. Co-op boards, he said, can keep low-income residents in their units by providing an “internal subsidy” from people paying higher “market” rates.

“If they decide that they don’t want to provide an internal subsidy based on the revenue that they’re accruing out of the property, I guess that’s their choice,” Butt said. He added, “I’m not quite sure what the role is for the federal government in that.”

The federation’s Harvey Cooper said many co-ops can’t afford internal subsidies. The buildings are old when their 35-year-plus mortgages expire, he said, and the cash from market rents is needed for expensive capital repairs.

“To say that the co-ops would be able to cover all the costs of the people who are currently being subsidized is just not a realistic or sustainable proposition over the long haul,” Cooper said.

Asked about the controversy on Wednesday, Chow said, “We celebrate mixed-income housing.” She said once more that she never received a subsidy.

Chow was joined by residents of the Hugh Garner building, whose mortgage ends in 2017. One of them, youthful 92-year-old Eleanor McDonald, said she has supportive daughters who would help her pay the rent if she lost her subsidy. Some of her neighbours, she said, do not have the same safety net.

“There are people here who are just simply going to lose their homes. It’s as simple as that,” McDonald said. “We are an accessible building. If you have, as we have, a couple of people who are in their 70s, and need wheelchair accessibility — if they lose their housing, where do they go?”

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